How Are Your Spirits?

This morning while walking I was listening to a message Order From Chaos by Sinclair Ferguson. Some points were so powerful and graphic to me that it influenced my blog post for today.

How are your spirits? In our everyday vernacular someone is asking how is your mood, how are your emotions, how are you feeling? When someone is in good spirits, it seems to influence their outward countenance along with their speech and behavior. The same is when someone is in poor spirits or sad, dejected, depressed, frustrated. In general our spirits show the character of how we are at that moment, our insides, and that tends to spur our thoughts, words and outward behaviors, restrained or curtailed somewhat depending on circumstances, but still there.

Genesis 1:1-2 “In the beginning of God’s creation of the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was astonishingly empty, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the water.” The spirit of God. His character. His insides.

Genesis 1:26 “And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and they shall rule over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the heaven and over the animals and over all the earth and over all the creeping things that creep upon the earth.”

Proverbs 8 “Will not wisdom call out, and understanding give forth its voice? What is wisdom? It is found in the Word of God. So back to Genesis 1:2 and 1:26, let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Who is our? God, Genesis 1:2 mentions His spirit. And Proverbs 8, wisdom, the Word of God. God, His spirit, the Word of God.

“At the top of the heights upon the road; at the crossroads she stands. Beside the gates, at the entrance of the roof, at the entrance of the portals she cries “To you, O men, I call, and my voice [is] to the children of man. O simpletons, understand cunning, and you fools, give understanding to your heart. Hearken for I will speak noble things, and the opening of my lips shall be right things. All the sayings of my lips are with righteousness; there is nothing twisted or crooked in them. They are all true to the understanding one, and straight to those who find knowledge.” Who is “she”? A harlot, a tempter yet here, clearly one who has been turned from her ways to something bigger, better, different and she is imploring people to please listen to what she has to say, what has happened to her, her testimony.

And here is what happened to her. Or perhaps we should say who happened to her. “I am wisdom; I dwelt [beside] cunning, and the knowledge of devices I will find. Fear of the Lord is to hate evil, haughtiness, pride, the way of evil, and a perverse mouth; [these] I hate. I have counsel and sound wisdom; I am understanding; I have might. Kings reign with me, and rulers legislate righteousness. Through me princes govern, and nobles, yea, all judges of righteousness. I will love those who love me, and those who seek me eagerly will find me. In the way of righteousness I will go, in the midst of the paths of justice. There is substance to give inheritance to those who love me, and I will fill their treasuries. The Lord acquired me at the beginning of His way, before His works of old. From the distant past I was enthroned, from the beginning, of those that preceded the earth. I was created when there were yet no deeps, when there were no fountains replete with water. I was created before the mountains were sunk, before the hills; when He had not yet made the land and the outsides and the beginning of the dust of the earth. When He established the heavens, there I was, when He drew a circle over the face of the deep; And now, my children, hearken to me, and fortunate are those who observe my ways. For he who has found me has found life, and he has obtained favor from the Lord. But he who sins against me robs his soul; all who hate me, love death.”

However, what an interesting description of the Word of God. The Lord acquired me at the beginning of His way, before His works of old. From the distant past I was enthroned, from the beginning, of those that preceded the earth. Certainly sounds like a person is being described. John 1:1-5 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.He was in the beginning with God.All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Back to discussing the spirit. Numbers 23:19 “God is not a man that He should lie, nor is He a mortal that He should relent. Would He say and not do, speak and not fulfill? Malachi 3:6 “For I, the Lord, have not changed” So, while our human spirits change, being in good spirits, being in poor spirits, and with it our thoughts, words, outward behaviors often reflect our spirits, God does not change. He is the same yesterday, today and will be the same tomorrow. So, with that, God’s Spirit does not change. How do we know about God’s Spirit, His inner workings, His personality? Through His Word, which interestingly is expressed as being a person. Who do you think it is? How about Jesus?

So, when I or others talk about focusing on God, not on ourselves, and that it is a supernatural natural maturation and growth, evolving in thoughts and behaviors that results after receiving salvation, well, what happens at salvation? Ezekiel 36:26-27. “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the heart of stone out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My spirit within you and bring it about that you will walk in My statutes and you will keep My ordinances and do [them]” Wow! This is how it happens!!! With God’s spirit in us, His inner workings, His personality have been placed in us. And what is in us, when we focus on it, it flows out! And how do we know what God desires, His statutes, His ordinances? Through God’s Word. That is how it is through Jesus motivated and powered by the Holy Spirit, we walk in God’s ways!

I pray for you to be brought to deeper revelations wherever you are at on this journey called life!